Tesla EV charger/eaton breakers

If you wanted to test the AL bus vs Copper bus ability to provide better damping / lower impedance / conversion of current to noise theory you could grab a small copper bus sub-panel, one QO/Homeline/etc breaker, and ‘temp’ wire a loop into the existing panel and hang out for 30 min?
 
I agree with the others, check voltage and current on the service conductors ahead of the main and the 60A EVSE branch circuit with the car charging and the oven on and some other loads running, turn up the heat. Remove a few breakers a visual check of the panel buss will reveal any issues with the bus.
Try charging a different car.
 
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TwistLock said:
If you wanted to test the AL bus vs Copper bus ability to provide better damping / lower impedance / conversion of current to noise theory you could grab a small copper bus sub-panel, one QO/Homeline/etc breaker, and ‘temp’ wire a loop into the existing panel and hang out for 30 min?
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Not if the AL bus is still in series powering the sub. This sounds to me like a total waste of time, no offense.

Try a different car, go from there.
 
Not sure how trying a different car helps much. The current car and EVSE combo (supposedly) worked fine at the owner’s previous home. And even if it doesn’t trip with a different car, he’s not going to replace the car!
 
yo_ryco said:
The only issue raised when the ev is being charged, and now we have proven that dialing back the charger does not affect anything.
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Just curious - I know you said that the customer dialed the current limit back to 80%, based on Eaton's recommendation. And that the problems persisted. Just wondering if they tried dialing it all the way back, to like 6 or 8A (or whatever the lower limit is).

Certainly not a permanent solution, but it would be interesting to see if the breakers still tripped with the minimum current.
 
jaggedben said:
Not if the AL bus is still in series powering the sub. This sounds to me like a total waste of time, no offense.

Try a different car, go from there.
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None taken. But if test function is masked when EV is charging that suggests noise. I mentioned trying copper bussing because I was once instructed to do the same thing for a VFD pre EV by a shop owner and mfg.
 
ptonsparky said:
None of Manual test buttons working certainly adds a flavor to the mix.
They work if the charging is off?
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When the charger is active, the test buttons do not function. When I turn off the breaker that feeds the charger, the buttons work as they should. I am going to ask the homeowner to dial the charger as far back as it can go and see what happens, just as a test.
 
yo_ryco said:
Once the charging process has started, every gfci/afci/dfci breaker in both panels eventually trips. The timing and order of the breakers tripping is completely random. Breakers trip in both panels, on both legs of the service. We have checked and re-checked all connections multiple times. I am not able to find anything that is causing this problem within the panels or wiring of the home. It seems to be a problem with either the charger or the vehicle itself.
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No, it's a problem with the breakers. Poor design.

-Hal
 
yo_ryco said:
I am going to ask the homeowner to dial the charger as far back as it can go and see what happens, just as a test.
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The SAE J1772 Standard has a low limit for charging current of 6A.

My Chargepoint EVSE can dial back to 8A.

Not sure about a Tesla Wall or Mobile Connector, but I would bet you can set it down into single digits.

It would be really interesting to see what happens then.
 
MD Automation said:
The SAE J1772 Standard has a low limit for charging current of 6A.

My Chargepoint EVSE can dial back to 8A.

Not sure about a Tesla Wall or Mobile Connector, but I would bet you can set it down into single digits.

It would be really interesting to see what happens then.
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Tesla owners can dial down charging current by telling the car to do so via the app. I don't believe the EVSE is involved. Ultimately the EV determines the current and it can do less than 6A, and does, during the constant voltage phase.
 
retirede said:
That’s correct. The EVSE simply tells the car the max current that the car is allowed to take. The car sets the charge rate without exceeding the value signalled by the EVSE.
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Yes my point was that I believe when Tesla owners set a charging rate through their app, it's only sending messages to the car. There are other systems where (max) charging rate can be controlled by sending messages to the EVSE.
 
jaggedben said:
Yes my point was that I believe when Tesla owners set a charging rate through their app, it's only sending messages to the car. There are other systems where (max) charging rate can be controlled by sending messages to the EVSE.
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Yes, that's the way it works in my non-Tesla universe. Dynamically changing the current limit on my Chargepoint EVSE (from 32A to 8A in 1A increments) causes it to modify the duty cycle of the PWM CP (Control Pilot) signal with the EV. Can even change it "on the fly" while the charging session is active. My car simply adjusts immediately to that new advertised limit.

Apologies for the confusion on my part.

And for the OP, it will be really interesting to see if breakers hold and test buttons function with a really low charge current. Certainly not a solution, but an interesting test.
 
A possibly wackadoodle additional idea occurred to me here, which is that perhaps the CP signal is somehow getting 'onto the mains' and this is disrupting the AFCI functioning. Or I suppose it's possible that some other kind of damage or failure in the EVSE is introducing noise. I still think that trying another car is the next step.
 
I agree. I initially wanted to try another charger, but I'm not convinced that the charger would be a problem. Maybe I don't understand fully what the wall charger does, but it seems to me that all the complexity is in the actual vehicle.
 
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